SS2 Crashes upon starting a new game

[67510b6adee24Mike]

Bioshock inspired me to revisit System Shock 2 so I dug out my old cd, installed, and of course it did not work

The game would go pink and then crash right after the intro cutscene, even before the game menu.  I looked for a solution and found this excellent forum.  The problem of course was my 8800gtx and using Kolya's hex-edited .exe I was able to get into the game menu.  My problems were not over however: the game now crashes once I start a new game right after the introduction movie (which plays without problems).  I get the generic "System Shock 2 has encountered a problem and needs to close".  I also tried the DDFIXed .exe from here http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=117616, with the same exact results: can get into the game menu but right after I watch the intro movie it crashes.

I'm pretty much out of ideas, I even tried a .torrent version of the game and had the same results.  Since I'm running a core duo cpu I double-checked to makes sure affinity was set to cpu 0.  I'm running winxp sp2 and even upgraded to sp3 to see if that would help.  My cd was version 2.3 already so I could not patch.  I suspect it might have to do with me running the latest nvidia drivers as the game crashes right where the window switches resolution and it's about to become '3d'.    I would rather not go back to old drivers and perhaps there is something else I missed.  My next idea is to try the HOTU version, what else can I do?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[67510b6ae19c1miracle.freak from a bar]

If you're using ddfix there should be no more resolution switching between menu and game so if you're using it right this shouldn't be caused by resolution issues. It looks like there are problems loading shock2.gam or .mis files. Did you use SS2 Tool for making the game mod ready and merged with a patch? When you do so don't forget to replace the shock2.exe for ddfixed because ss2 tool will replace it for ordinary patch.